Winnifred Opal Sherrard
Personality Background Birth Born to a noble family recently locating to the Redridge Mountains, to be closer to the Capital, Lady Winnifred Opal Bedgood was an only child. She was spoiled by her parents who adored her, and was treated like royalty by close family and family-friends. Winnifred, however, only wanted to be a free girl when she was old enough to realize she was being suffocated by her noble birth. Nonetheless, she learned to behave. Being a young girl, she was smart and cunning, knowing that she could perform in her lessons quickly and accurately, leaving time for fun in the early afternoons. She was, however, a troublemaker by nature. Before she reached the age of 10 she had ruined hundreds of dresses that were made just for her, not something store bought or made of cheap cotton. Her friends, three girls who followed her around like a mother and her ducklings, caused such chaos in their early days. They would play in the bakery, hide from their parents in the stables, and teasing boys from the tailor’s window. On the surface she grew out of that stage and Winnifred and her friends began to form into proper young ladies. They grew into tall, pretty teenagers who would rather spend an hour brushing each other’s hair and chatting about the young men from Stormwind who rode by on their horses than cause trouble. The Light Sometimes, however, they got antsy. On a warm summer evening while the girls were out by the lake some children came by. Winnifred told them a fairytale, for she loved children and would have swooped them up into her arms could she lift two 8-year-olds at once. The two boys preferred to run around while she talked, acting out the scene, rather than snuggle close anyway. But one fell into the lake and could not swim well. Without taking care to the fact that she wore several layers of fabric, albeit thin fabric due to the summer heat, Winnifred jumped into the water after him. The boy quickly began to sink, shouting out for help and swallowing more water than was healthy. Saving the boy was rather easy for a healthy young woman like Winnifred. He lived and everyday following came to her door with a flower and a kind “thank you.” She was touched and hoped one day to have a son as sweet and grateful as this lad. It wasn’t saving him that changed her life—not fully—but the image she saw as she held onto his little body and carried him to shore. Touched by the Light and her goodness from within, Winnifred vowed to become a Paladin and learn the ways of the Light. She was 17 at the time and quickly found a war to be approaching. Training & The Wars Unprepared, for by the time it struck she had only been training for a year, she missed the battle. Fortunately, she was able to help from the side-lines by making food for the soldiers and offering shelter to travelers at her large home in Redridge. The raging of the war ruined much of the land and though the water remained beautiful, many of the homes were damaged. Winnifred stood high on one of the cliffs and watched her family’s estate fall to the ground. Within days it was over and the people of the mountains began to rebuild. Winnifred left for training. She would get nowhere further at this pace and was in a hurry to be helpful. While she would never say the small things she did were not good, she wanted to fight alongside the brave men and women who protected the city and the good people of the Alliance. She wanted more than a peaceful life for herself; she wanted peace for all. She married Jeremy just in time for the Second War of Azeroth to begin. This time, however, Winnifred was ready to fight and did just that. It earned her honor and a place among her fellow soldiers as a knight herself. Some of the men called her “Dame Winnifred Sherrard” but she insisted just to call her “Lady Winnifred.” Titles, while flattering, never suited her despite her noble birth. Toward the end of the war Winnifred became pregnant, overcome with signs of nausea throughout the day and onset mood swings brought about the conclusion. Thought overjoyed at the thought of having a child, she was mildly disappointed for she could not finish the war for fear of being injured or hurting the growing babe within her womb. Marriage & Family Years passed and in her training she met her husband, Jeremey Sherrard, a newly appointed knight. When she first met him, she hated him. Winnifred thought he was a foolish young man who was headstrong, stubborn as a mule, and had no real fighting etiquette. How he had become a knight she would never know. Often she thought she could teach him how to properly fight, how to properly swing a sword or defend himself, but he wouldn’t listen. They only argued and yelled at each other. When she told her friends, now a gaggle of female soldiers and her ladies-in-waiting who followed her to her training camps but remained marginally separate—it was so they didn’t distract the boys trying to become men, of course—they laughed at her. Laughed! Winnifred couldn’t understand why and when she demanded explanation, they told her that the arguing and rough-housing fights was out of “sexual tension.” Really? Please. As it turned out, they were correct. Two years after meeting Jeremey, one year spent in denial of her attraction to him, the pair was married. There was much rejoicing when their son was born, just about the time the war came to an end, and he was named Robert Jerome Sherrard in honor of his recently passing paternal grandfather. The pregnancy had seemed to come and go without much trouble, which made Winnifred plenty glad to have no bumps in the road for her first time. Stories from her friends of their pregnancies had, for a time, turned her away from the idea. Yet when she held Robert in her arms for the first time on a cold, snowy day in winter, she was glad to have done it and would happily do it again. Unfortunately, years passed and for whatever reason the pair could not conceive again. Optimistic as ever, Winnifred was more than happy to praise the Light for her one healthy son. He grew up to be a strong young lad, though he wanted little to do with the wars and became a smith instead. His strong hands and tough skin were more than welcome at any forge and he created some of the most beautiful weaponry his mother had ever seen. Yet all was slowly becoming dark in Winnifred’s world as Jeremey became sick and, sadly, was not getting better. Despite all of her knowledge on how to use the Light, all of her prayers, and all of the remedies healers came by with, Jeremey passed in his sleep in the fall. With the comfort of her friends and the love of her son, a reminder of all the wonderful things her husband had been and done for her, she coped with the loss well. Present The Third War came and went without much notice, though she fought valiantly for a woman getting older. She kept fit and trained constantly throughout the years, lifting weights to remain toned, and offering her blade where it was needed. Robert crafted her some of her most deadly weapons, weapons which now hang on the wall in her living room. He travels occasionally, sometimes with Winnifred, sometimes on his own, to get his name and wares out to the world. These days Winnifred can be found keeping up with the gossip of Stormwind, lingering by the Cathedral while waiting for orders or a request for help to come her way. Sometimes she goes looking for trouble, going as South as South could be or flying all the way up to the frigged airs of the North. It depended on her mood, which is often pleasant and optimistic even in these rough times. She figures if the Alliance can still stand, the day is sunny, and the citizens are well…all is good. However, there is a fire in her heart that aches for work—even should it call for training a youngster. Her age, hardly fifty-seven, would not stop her from being a splendid mentor.